by Victor Koman
Golding glided between the cases and around stacks of books until he reached a break in the mess that I arbitrarily declared the living room.
He cleared off a heap of plaques from each of three folding chairs. "I presume that this is your friend with the theological crisis?" He extended his hand as an afterthought.
I shook it. "Dell Ammo."
His grip was firm, pleasant.
"Good name," he said. "Spanish?"
"Just American."
He sat, folded his hands over his slim torso and smiled. "Ms. Perrine tells me that you're experiencing problems of a religious nature."
I rubbed the bruise on the back of my skull and nodded. "You might say that."
"I must admit that I sometimes feel like a priest, the way that people come to me with problems of faith. Except, of course, that I try to steer the doubters away from God."
"I, uh, don't exactly have a crisis of
faith
, actually." I tried to phrase things so that I didn't come off sounding like the consummate buffoon. "I simply would like to know which definitions of God are false" "They all are."
"Yes," I said hastily. "But why?"
"Because God doesn't exist. It's just a concept that people have an uncommon affection for."
"It's fine to assert that, but lots of people-lots of intelligent, sane people-believe in God. What sort of proof can you provide that God doesn't exist?"
He grinned and took a deep, satisfied breath. I had the uncomfortable feeling of talking myself right where he wanted me to.
"You can't demand proof of the nonexistence of something. It's logically impossible. The burden of proof is on those who assert that God exists."
"Why?"
"For the same reason that-up until a few years ago-an accused man didn't have to prove his innocence in court. Suppose you told me that there had been a murder. You demand that I prove I didn't do it. I ask you who was killed-how, when, where. You refuse to tell me and repeat that I must prove I didn't do it. How can I logically prove the nonexistence of something for which there is no evidence? The burden of proof must always be on the prosecution-on the one who asserts that something exists, whether it be a crime or a god. Only when I'm confronted with evidence purporting to prove that God exists can I do anything. Then it would involve demonstrating that the evidence is in error."
"Which," I said, "wouldn't prove the nonexistence of God, only the inadequacy of the evidence."
"Exactly." Golding peered at me. "Have you a philosophical background?"
"No. I've given extensive consideration, though, to what constitutes proof in, um... judicial situations."
"So why the interest in God?"
"My client wishes to lodge a complaint about the Big Bang." I wanted some sort of an answer from him. "Maybe you can begin by giving me a few definitions-"
"No," he said. "Begin
you.
You define God."
"I can't."
"Come now." He used both his hands to brush back his hair. "Any God will do. Greek, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Hebrew, African..."
"The only thing I've found," I began, stuffing my hands in my pockets and leaning back in the chair, "that is common to all the accounts I've read is that God is unknowable to varying degrees. That makes my search a bit difficult."
He peaked his fingers together like Basil Rathbone contemplating a crime. "Epistemological transcendence. Yes. Claiming to know that something cannot be known, ever. Claiming to possess the omniscience to know that something will never be known. Contradiction and conceit-the traits of a successful theologian. In my book, anyone stating that God is incomprehensible is merely confessing the specious nature of his own arguments."
Footsteps approached from the bedroom before I could respond, saving me from having to think of a snappy rejoinder.
A short, slender woman appeared, wrapped only in a large burgundy-hued bath towel. She gave Ann and me a quick glance with large, dark eyes. Her throat made pardon-me noises.
"Ted?" she said in a gentle voice.
"Raissa! Come in and meet Ann and Dell."
She entered the room with a fluid motion of her bare legs. From the silver-streaked raven hair that hung down to the nape of her neck, I guessed her to be somewhere in her early forties. That body told some fine lies, though. Her arms, legs, face, and hands displayed enough youth in them to say what needed to be said about the parts of her hidden beneath the towel.
Raissa smiled warmly at the two of us and maneuvered her way past to reach the study. A word processor whirred and clacked into life. Soft tapping of fingers against keys drifted into the living room.
Golding smiled.
"The greatest joy in my life and my highest value." From where he sat, he had a vantage on the study that we didn't. He watched her for a moment. "She gives great perceptual reaffirmation of my self-concept."
He shifted his attention back to me. "
God
is one of those words that has been bandied about into the realm of the meaningless. You can't define
god
any more than you can define
love
or
freedom.
Everyone has his own definition, right or wrong. With so many different interpretations of a term, the intellectual noise generated turn the words into nothing more than floating abstractions-words meant to conjure up an emotional image that's not concrete or identifiable." He stopped to smile at Ann and wink. "How'm I doing?"
"The gods that existed before the advent of Judeo-Christianity were far more concrete," she said.
"Yes," he agreed. "And they were denounced by later theologians for being
too
concrete,
too
easy to conceptualize. Who needed to pay a priest to communicate with such deities when an idol in the living room was sufficient to invoke the spirit?" He looked over into the study. "Raissa! Make us some coffee!"
"Fuck off, love-I'm on a hot streak." The word processor buzzed and clattered.
Golding smiled. I wondered whether the man ever frowned. I sniffed the air to check for the aroma of burning hemp.
"I guess I'll make the coffee." Golding went to the kitchen, sidestepping books and plaques all the way. He spoke over his shoulder.
"As with any type of fiction, Dell, suspension of disbelief is an absolute necessity in religion. Faith is the tool used to undermine reason and circumvent proof. Faith supposedly operates where reason is deficient.
Shit!
"
A coffee cup clattered to the floor. He stooped to pick it up. "Religion, like politics, cannot be defended as rational."
Ann smiled gently. "You put in a qualifier back there, Mr. Golding. About the older gods."
"Yes I did, Ann. And I'm about to get to that."
I stretched my feet out and sighed. I wasn't getting anything that I figured would be of use. I stood and walked into the kitchen, pulling a cigarette from the pack in my coat pocket. I had to ask him the question. Directly.
"Look, Golding." I lit up the coffin nail. "I just want to know one thing." I paused for dramatic effect and took a deep drag. "Whether He exists or not, a lot of people act as if He does. With that in mind, how can I kill God?"
The canister of coffee slipped from Golding's hands to thud against the parquet linoleum, spilling its grounds like jewels from a chest. I had finally succeeded in getting him to frown.
It was actually more of a scowl.
"How, precisely, do you plan to kill God? Poison? Drowning? High explosives? Magic?"
"That's what Ann thought you could help me with. I-"
Anger gathered in his gaze like a burning L.A. smog. "Kill something that doesn't exist? Kill a mere idea floating around in people's minds? I'm sorry if I seem insulted by your intrusion here. I don't have much time for cranks. You may have the coffee I promised you, then I'd like you to leave."
"Dell is serious," Ann said. "I thought
that your experience-"
"That's rather the point," he snapped. "My experience. I've been fighting a battle against antihuman, antirational, anti-joy brutes for thirty years. The most I can show for it is a few thousand people who now aren't afraid to question their early conditioning. That's good, and I've made a living at it. Around the world, however, murder and plunder still thrive in the name of God. Look at what Ireland is doing to Ulster and vice versa. Look at what Israel and PanArabia are doing to one another. Look at the Church that gathers and hoards gold and art treasures while its adherents starve, that smugly states that `the poor are with us always' without admitting that there's such a thing as
less
poor and
less-
" He looked at Ann for a moment. The muscles in his face relaxed, though what remained was less anger than weariness.
"Do you think that, because I'm an atheist, I don't take God seriously? Do you think that a doctor doesn't take cancer seriously, simply because he thinks it has no place in human life?"
"Cancer exists," I said. "A doctor can find it. He can cut it away. He doesn't play word games to deny its existence."
Golding paused for a moment to consider my non sequitur. He smiled once more. Almost impishly.
"Many cancers are created by the mental attitudes of the victim. So it is with God." He tapped at the side of the coffee pot with fingernails immaculately maintained. "You want to know where the current God came from? The Judeo-Christian God evolved as a
construct
-as a political effort to accumulate church power and crush the followers of older, established religions by making the new God more powerful, more intrusive, more petulant, and more irrational than any previous god or goddess. The Levite priests of Israel brazenly copied religious concepts of the Aryans, the Sumerians, and dozens of other Indo-European races. The theft from the Romans and the Greeks was even more obvious-they just changed the names a bit. Jove became Je-ho-vah, Zeus became Ya-Zeus, the goddesses Ma and Rhea became Ma-ria."
That was too much. "Are you saying that the Jews adopted the religion of their enemies?"
"Can you think of a better way to co-opt your foes? Can you think of a better way to attract possible converts than to use their own symbols? How do you think the Christians co-opted the Jews and the pagans? Certainly not by offering a totally different religion to usurp its predecessors. They incorporated the old religions almost whole cloth while simultaneously stripping the symbols of their former meaning. The Babylonians still worship Ishtar? Substitute worship of the Virgin Mary. Egyptians believe that Osiris rose from the dead? Have Ya-Zeus do the same."
Golding seemed to be warming up again. He began to spit out snippets of historicity as if they were theological watermelon seeds. The outcome was about as intellectually tidy.
"Mount Sinai stood for centuries as a mountain holy to the moon god Sinn, long before Moses went there to speak to Yahveh. And this new god's burning bush was nothing more than a psychedelic substance called loranthus growing on acacia-a bush sacred to the Sun." He prattled on while getting the cups and saucers. "The story of Christ is a slipshod retelling of the Mithras and Osiris legends grafted to the clumsy attempt of an aggressive rabbi to be crowned King of Israel.
"They made this composite God of theirs an incomprehensible mishmash of conflicting traits. He was as rational as Apollo and as murderous as Typhon. The priests kept everyone on His good side-for a price. The same group-the same philosophical movement that devised and later refined the Judeo-Christian God-outlawed the older religions and slandered the Old Gods as devils and demons."
Golding made motions as if he were coming to an important point. I had long before lost interest and was more mesmerized by the coffeepot in his hand. It floated and dipped with his every gesture. The dark brew inside sloshed and swirled, never quite reaching the rim. My vision of having a hot cup of Java in the near future dimmed considerably.
"They reserved their greatest hate for witchcraft, though. They rightly recognized it as a primitive form of science, not merely a rival faith. Science-in any form-is anathema to faith. How much more skeptical is the one who experiments with herbs or symbols or rituals to pick what works best compared to the one who places absolute trust in a priest or rabbi or imam?"
"I suppose we could ask Elvis."
He wasn't about to be sidetracked. The coffeepot sloshed precariously with every jab of emphasis he made at me. "Why do you think chemists, astronomers, and mathematicians were branded as warlocks and sorcerers during the Dark Ages? Why were Galileo's discoveries slandered as the Devil's work? He and others were using the scientific method of observation, theorization, and experimentation that paralleled that of ancient forms of witchcraft!"
"Are you defending witchcraft, Mr. Golding?"
He looked at Ann as if she'd just stepped on his eyeglasses. Her question disconcerted him so much that he actually poured a cup of the coffee and handed it to her.
"No," he said. "Of course I'm not." He pointed to some jars on the counter. "Creamer and aspartame over there."
I raised an eyebrow. Aspartame had been banned shortly after the discovery that its use resulted in increased intelligence.
I took the cup he offered. It was lukewarm. One of the pitfalls of philosophy, I suppose.
Golding sounded almost defensive. "I'm merely saying that-historically-it's been downhill all the way, religionwise. Besides, witchcraft
per se
is a craft, not a religion. It's a primitive form of science conducted by members of a religion. In much the way Lysenkoism was a crude science conducted by members of the Marxist faith."
Ann lowered her cup to say softly, "Lysenko didn't follow the scientific method. Witches do."
Golding raised an ebon-and-grey eyebrow in her direction. "Yes. And unlike Judeo-Christianity or Marxism, the Old Religions had quite understandable deities. Gods and goddesses who didn't take as great a delight in slaughtering their creations. Even as scandalous a god as Zeus was outmatched by the murdering war god of the Old Testament or the nearly identical Allah or the manic-depressive masochist of the New Testament. The old ones didn't issue as many commandments and contradictory orders.
"But, of course, I'd rather not have anything to do with any of them at all. Which is why I'm an atheist, not a Druid or something. All right?"
Ann nodded. She seemed vaguely troubled by his speech, though she hid it behind her cup of coffee.
I yawned. "I am serious," I said, "about killing God."
"Oh, sure."
"Look at me, Golding."
He lowered his gaze to stare down on me. The kimono would have seemed ludicrous if it had been on anyone else this side of Christopher Lee. It gave him an air of imperious superiority.
"Do I look like a kidder, Golding?"
"You look like a hood."
Ann opened her mouth to protest. A motion of his hand silenced her.
"An educated hood, perhaps, but a hood nonetheless. You are a man who thinks he can change things through violence, even if it's the civilized violence of mockery. It's ideas that change the world, Mr. Ammo-not force or ridicule."
"So you can't help me." I swirled the remaining coffee around in my cup.
"Help you to do what? Actually kill God? The idea is absurd! Changing the way people think is the only way to improve the world."
I stared into my cup. Perhaps improving the world was not my client's intention. I knew that achieving a promised immortality was mine. I doubted that the drive to better the human condition had much bearing on the contract.
"I know I'm on the right track," I said. "People would just brush me off otherwise." I gazed up at him to add, "People have been trying to stop me."
"Then I wish you luck. The only good God is a dead God."
From the study drifted warm laughter. Raissa said, "Remember Spencer on freedom, Ted?"
Golding smiled sardonically. "Yes. Remember this, Dell-No god is dead so long as one pers
on has faith. You'd have to convince
everyone
that God doesn't exist. That's the enormity of your mission."
"Enormousness," Raissa corrected, entering to pour some Java in her unwashed cup.
Golding laughed. "The usage would be correct from the theist's point of view. Few people can countenance their gods getting snuffed."
I slugged down the rest of the tepid jo and set the cup on the Formica countertop. An odd chill came over me that I attributed to the carbonremover I'd just swallowed. When I chanced to glance up past Golding, my spine took a trip to the Antarctic.
Blood dripped slowly down the wall.
It began at the ceiling and spread down and across the eggshelltoned paint. It flowed fanlike down the wall, glistening wet. Something throbbed in my head with a sick rushing sound.
"What's the deal, Golding?"
"Hm?" He stared at me as if I'd had a stroke. He turned to follow my gaze, swallowed a mouthful of coffee with calm ease, and shrugged. "That? I'm afraid the upstairs bathroom leaks. I haven't gotten around to-"
"A tub that leaks blood?" My hand edged toward my empty waistband holster.
"Blood?" Raissa looked up, mystified. "That's a water stain."
No one said a word for a long moment. I looked at the wall again. A semicircular rust stain discolored the paint. It didn't move. It looked dry. Like an ordinary water stain.
Ann gasped in shock. The cup fell from her fingers to shatter loudly against the linoleum. Coffee splashed against her ankles, dripping down to her shoes.
"It was blood!" she cried. "In my cup!" She rushed to my side and held on, suddenly terrified. Perhaps Father Beathan's fear imprinting had had some effect after all.
"It looks disturbingly like coffee," Raissa said, deadpan.
Ann trembled like a moth inside a fist. "Blood. It was. Red and salty. Thick. Clotted."
Golding cleared his throat. "I think you'd better take her home."
I didn't feel so grand either. "Yeah" was all I could muster. I guided her out the front door to the car.